Amazon FBA Inbound Shipment – How It Works and What’s Important
Amazon FBA inbound shipment has become a relevant factor for sellers, but why exactly? Over 80 percent of third-party sellers on Amazon marketplaces use Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). This large number reveals one important thing: Despite all the complaints, the quality of FBA is so outstanding that most merchants prefer to rely on this service rather than build their own logistics. Once an order is placed, receiving, packing, shipping, customer service and returns are all handled by the online giant, while the sellers themselves stay out of the processes altogether.
In this setting, the only thing that Amazon sellers still have to do is to deliver new items to Amazon’s fulfillment centers before they go out of stock. So far, it sounds fairly simple: Send your products to Amazon – sell them – make money. However, sellers have to keep a few things in mind in order to enable a flawless inbound shipment to Amazon.
How to Send Your Shipment to Amazon
Once you have created SKUs in Seller Central and activated “Fulfillment by Amazon” for selected products, it’s time to focus on their shipment to a particular Amazon fulfillment center. The basic requirements for such inbound shipments include a shipping plan, proper packaging of the products and shipping with professional carriers. Amazon indicates that sent goods are usually available for sale within three business days of delivery. However, during peak sales periods such as pre-Christmas, Black Friday Week, etc., it may take longer, which the sellers should keep in mind when planning and managing their inbound shipments to Amazon.
Now how does Amazon FBA inbound shipping work? There are basically 4 options for creating a shipment:
In general, it is essential for sellers to follow the guidelines of their shipping plan. For example, they should not send goods to other logistics centers than indicated. You can find detailed information here: Sending products to Amazon. If you would like to get an impression of how to send your first shipment to Amazon FBA, you can watch corresponding videos by Amazon Seller University starting with this one: How to Get Started with Amazon FBA and Send Your First FBA Shipment.
| By working with the right partner, merchants can manage their FBA products much more easily than in Seller Central. This also applies to Amazon inbound logistics. The Plentymarkets system, for example, clearly visualizes all relevant steps of the inbound process. |
Amazon Inbound Process: Guidelines Sellers Need to Know
The requirements of the Amazon FBA inventory inbound process range from the right choice of boxes to weight and suitable packing material. In addition, depending on the type of shipment – for example, involving a carrier such as DHL, by truck, etc. – sellers need to pay attention to further guidelines. In the following, we would like to focus on the most important ones.
How to Pack a Shipment Properly
Amazon has clear guidelines as to how shipments to their logistics centers should be packed. of how shipments to a logistics center should be packed. Correct packaging is supposed to make the shipment intake easier and help avoid errors during this process.
In general, sellers should use a rigid, six-sided box with intact flaps. Acceptable standard boxes for inbound shipments to Amazon are regular slotted cartons (RSC), B flutes, ECT-32 (edge crush test), and 200 lb/inch2 (burst strength) boxes. The packing material around each individual item as well as between the items and the box walls should be at least 2 inches thick. In case the products are shipped in the manufacturer’s package, it is not necessary to take note of the 2 inches.
Box Dimensions and Weight
In general, boxes containing several standard-size or oversized items must not exceed 25 inches on any side. Exceeding the 25 inches is only permitted if the box contains items that are longer than 25 inches. Moreover, the boxes must not be heavier than 50 lb. Again, the only exception is if the weight of a single item exceeds 50 lb. In that case, the seller has to attach a label that designates “Team Lift” on the top and sides of the box. For items heavier than 100 lb, the attached labels should indicate “Mechanical Lift”.
Following Amazon FBA inbound shipment requirements regarding both the box dimensions and weight is crucial for Amazon sellers, since contravening the corresponding guidelines may result in blockage of further shipments.
Proper Labeling of Shipments
To facilitate a flawless FBA inbound shipment to Amazon’s fulfillment centers, all shipments have to be labeled properly. The corresponding guidelines include:
In addition, for a flawless Amazon FBA inbound shipment process, all items must have a scannable barcode. This can be manufacturer barcodes (eligible barcodes: UPC, EAN, JAN, and ISBN), Amazon barcodes (e.g. FNSKU) or a transparency authenticity code (for brand owners) to prevent product counterfeiting. More information about the requirements for Amazon inbound shipments can be found here: FBA product barcode requirements and Shipment label requirement.
Further Tips on Packaging
Amazon provides further information about what is considered suitable packing material by the shipping giant. Among others, the tape should be strong and designed for shipping.
Suitable packing materials:
Not suitable for packing:
Finally, to check whether your shipment is packed properly, you can carefully shake the prepared box. In an ideal case, the content does not move.
Avoid Mistakes: How You Shouldn’t Pack
There are a number of rookie mistakes that should be avoided, since many of them are not tolerated or can disturb the inbound shipment intake process of Amazon. These include, for example, the usage of point-of-sale containers that are considered part of the item being sold. Moreover, pallet-sized boxes with a removable lid (so-called “gaylords”) and bundling several boxes together are not allowed. Finally, the box surface must not be provided with strings or straps and over-wrapped with plastic or paper.
What Amazon sellers should additionally keep in mind is that the boxes are often stacked during shipping or in the logistics center. Hence, to avoid damage, it is essential to choose the right box size. If the box is too large, the empty space should be filled with a sufficient amount of packing material.
In general, products should be packed in a way that they are delivered intact and properly prepared to Amazon fulfillment centers facilitating a fast and flawless inbound shipment intake process. You can find detailed information about packaging guidelines here: Packaging and prep requirements.
What’s Inside? Information About the Box Content
Of course, Amazon’s Inbound and Outbound Logistics would like to know in detail what is inside any shipment. In particular, accurate content information should allow the delivered products to pass efficiently through the FBA network and to become available for sale faster. If this information is missing, Amazon will manually collect it when the shipment arrives at the fulfillment center – not for free though. The seller will be charged a per-unit fee of $0.15 from January to October and $0.30 in November and December. Moreover, by not providing accurate information about the box content, the seller does not only slow down the inbound process in Amazon logistics centers – thereby making it more expensive – but also risks getting his or her future shipments blocked.
Sellers should therefore rather choose one of the options available on Amazon. Basically, box content information can be submitted during shipment creation in Seller Central or via the Amazon Marketplace Web Service (MWS). Which method to use depends on the selected workflow for shipment creation.
Click here for more information and frequently asked questions around this topic: Provide box content information.
Parcel, Truckload or Container Shipment?
The type of shipment also has an impact on which guidelines sellers have to keep in mind during the inbound process at Amazon fulfillment centers.
Information on truckload and ocean container shipments can be found here:
Seller requirements for LTL, FTL, and FCL deliveries.
How to Cancel an FBA Inbound Shipment to Amazon
It may happen that you have already initiated an inbound shipment, but, for some reason, would like to cancel it. To this end, you can click on “Void shipments and charges” at the bottom of the workflow page. Importantly, voiding cannot be applied to individual shipments, but rather will cancel all created shipments. Moreover, all FBA Box ID and carrier labels created for voided shipments can no longer be used.
Whether you will get a refund of charges from Amazon partnered carriers or not depends on the type of shipment and the time-point. If you cancel small parcel shipments within 24 hours after having accepted the shipping settings and charges, you will get a full refund. For pallet shipments, however, you have a timeframe of only one hour, otherwise, you will void the shipment but not the carrier charges.
For more information and frequently asked questions regarding this topic, click here: Send to Amazon: Change or cancel your shipment.
Amazon FBA and Inbound Shipment: Potential Errors
Not everything always goes smoothly. In the first place, errors can occur when shipments are not in line with Amazon’s guidelines. In this case, a lot can go wrong when it comes to shipment intake. According to the Inbound Performance Summary, possible problems include:
Sellers can avoid all these errors by carefully studying and following Amazon’s inbound shipment requirements. However, even in case a shipment is prepared perfectly, there are still sources of errors on which the seller has no impact. For example, an error can arise during the shipment processing by Amazon employees.
After Shipment Arrival: Controlling and Reconciliation
Once the shipment has been received at an Amazon logistics center, sellers can and should have a look at the details of the inbound process. For this, they can select “Inventory > Manage FBA Shipments”, go to “Track shipment” in the shipment creation workflow and click on the “Contents” tab. The latter now displays the status of all units received. Any discrepancies between the original shipping plan and actually received content can also be viewed here. If items are missing or damaged after the inbound process at Amazon, there is an option to request an investigation. In case any Amazon FBA inbound shipment is lost during the process, the seller will be refunded the value of the product.
You can view the status column describing the state of each product. The status “Action required” means that there is a discrepancy allowing you to request an investigation. To submit the request, select one of the available options under “Action required”:
In addition, Amazon often requires further documents, which can be uploaded by clicking on the “Choose file” button and then on the “Upload” button. These documents are supposed to help investigate possible errors during the inbound process at Amazon. Such documents primarily include the proof of inventory ownership (e.g. an invoice from a supplier) and, in the case of truckloads, the proof of delivery (e.g. a bill of lading). Additional information can also help find out the reasons for the discrepancies. In this regard, Amazon suggests:
| Information type example | Description |
| Any known discrepancies | Did you or your supplier ship more or fewer units than you originally expected? Did you or your supplier ship the wrong product? |
| A description of the shipping boxes | Our team does a physical check of the fulfillment center, so information about the color, size, or any distinguishing marks on your shipping boxes can help us find them more quickly. |
| Product codes | Verify the UPC, EAN, or JAN on your products. Does it match the product code shown in Seller Central? |
| Any prep activity that was missed | An item that was not properly prepped before being shipped can cause delays in the receiving process, as we must prep the item for you. |
Afterwards, the seller can preview the request, review the information and finally submit it.
Automatic Analysis of Amazon FBA Inbound Shipment Errors
Instead of manually digging through numerous shipments and units in Seller Central, marketplace sellers can have their FBA shipments monitored automatically. This is especially beneficial for sellers with a high volume of orders and a large number of SKUs, who need to keep their inventory updated almost constantly and often find themselves limited by time and staff constraints. Additionally, it is unacceptable to tolerate products being damaged or lost during the FBA process without seeking reimbursement from Amazon. After all, nobody wants to burn through money unnecessarily.
With SELLERLOGIC Lost & Found Full Service, FBA errors that occur with your products are not only identified but also reimbursed automatically. This way, your schedule frees up for other tasks while at the same time relieving you of the tedious and energy-draining duty of sifting through Amazon reports and communicating with Seller Support to get your reimbursements. What’s more, some reimbursements may be so minimal that they are not worth the effort and time required. However, completely neglecting these errors is also not an option in the long run, as they can sum up to sizeable amounts of revenue you can use to invest in your business. Lost and Found Full Service consistently audits your account, identifies more discrepancies, and resolves more claims than you ever could manually.
In addition to the above described discrepancies during inbound shipment, Lost & Found also identifies Amazon FBA errors of further types, including:
These errors cost FBA sellers several thousand dollars a year on average. Lost & Found finds such cases up to 18 months retrospectively.
Conclusion: Inbound Shipment to Amazon
FBA is not as simple as it sounds, unfortunately. Although sellers can send their goods directly to a logistics center, following the guidelines regarding shipment dimensions, packing material, labeling, etc. are quite a challenge. The key here is to be well prepared or to work with professionals.
The same applies to the tracking of corresponding errors. If Amazon is responsible for an error, sellers are entitled to a reimbursement from the online giant, as long as the item is no longer sellable. To create the claims efficiently, sellers should definitely use a professional tool such as SELLERLOGIC Lost & Found.
FAQs
Amazon FBA inbound shipment refers to the process of sending your inventory to Amazon fulfillment centers as part of the Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) program. Sellers prepare and ship their products to Amazon’s warehouses, where Amazon handles storage, packaging, and shipping to customers. This workflow includes creating a shipping plan, labeling products, selecting a carrier, and tracking the shipment until it reaches the designated fulfillment center.
To cancel an inbound Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) shipment, start by logging into your Amazon Seller Central account. Once you’re in, navigate to the “Manage FBA Shipments” section under the “Inventory” tab. Here, you’ll find a list of your shipments. Locate the shipment you wish to cancel, making sure it’s still in a cancelable status, such as “Working,” “Shipping,” or “Ready to Ship.” Click on the shipment name to open its details, where you’ll find the option to cancel the shipment. Confirm your decision, and the shipment will be removed from your active list. Keep in mind that any labels or fees associated with the shipment may not be refundable. If you created multiple shipments within a batch, you’ll need to cancel each one individually. Once canceled, you should receive a confirmation email from Amazon.
Image credits in order of appearance: © Mike Mareen – adobe.stock.com / © Tobias Arhelger – adobe.stock.com / © JackF – adobe.stock.com / © ekkaluck – adobe.stock.com
